The Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, has said Nigeria’s ambition to build a $1 trillion economy cannot be achieved without the full economic participation of women.
Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja during the Second National Gender Inclusion Conference, #SheIsIncluded 2026, held at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Shettima said the federal government has unveiled four strategic platforms to bridge the gender gap in financial inclusion and “turn women’s economic potential into enterprise, jobs and sustainable growth.”
Represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties (Office of the Vice President), Dr. Aliyu Modibbo, the VP insisted that the $1 trillion economic ambition of the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu “will remain out of reach if women continue to face structural barriers to finance, markets, skills and other opportunities.”
“We have set our sights on a one-trillion-dollar economy. But what kind of economy can we build if half of our people cannot participate fully in creating it?” VP Shettima queried.
He outlined the disparity in access, noting that “only 47 per cent of Nigerian women had formal financial accounts, compared with 58 per cent of men,” describing it as “millions of women whose businesses lacked access to affordable capital and whose entrepreneurial potential remained largely untapped.”
The Vice President stressed that investing in women was a growth strategy, not charity.
“The question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in women; it is whether we can afford not to. Our answer is no!” he declared.
He said the federal government was moving from policy declarations to an “architecture of delivery” through initiatives designed to connect women and young people to skills, capital, markets and emerging economic opportunities.
Among the initiatives, he cited “the National Income Activation Initiative and the Women in Energy Partnership with the World Bank, which he said was positioning women to participate as entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and leaders in the energy transition.”
Senator Shettima cautioned against measuring progress through national averages alone.
“That is the difference between announcing inclusion and governing for it,” he said, urging financial institutions, fintech companies, investors and development partners to treat gender-intentional finance as a viable market rather than concessionary charity.
“Women’s enterprises are demand; their savings are capital; their ideas are innovation,” the VP stated.
He challenged state governments to measure success “not merely by the number of women enrolled in programmes but by businesses expanded, jobs created and households whose resilience improved.”
“Inclusion must be measured by changed lives, not attendance registers,” he said.
The VP also demanded stronger accountability, insisting that every commitment from the conference should have “an owner, a measurable target and a deadline,” and be tracked through mechanisms including the proposed National Gender and Financial Inclusion Awards.
Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, said #SheIsIncluded “must move beyond an annual campaign and become an enduring national delivery framework for women’s economic prosperity.”
“These inequalities represent productive capacity our economy is yet to activate. Every viable woman-led enterprise that cannot obtain financing is investment lost, and every young woman with skills but no pathway to formal employment or entrepreneurial opportunity represents human capital underused,” Hadejia said.
“A nation aspiring for a one-trillion-dollar economy cannot afford to leave the productive capacity of half its population idle.”
The Governor of Jigawa State, Umar Namadi, represented by the Commissioner for Women Affairs, Hon. Hadiza Abduwahab, reaffirmed the state’s commitment, noting the Renewed Hope Agenda “has gained strong momentum” in financial inclusion for women.
The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, said the $1 trillion ambition “would remain incomplete unless women, particularly those operating in the informal sector, were fully integrated into the economic transformation agenda.”
She identified poor last-mile delivery, unsuitable lending models, inadequate gender-disaggregated data, insecurity and unpaid care work as major barriers.
The minister disclosed that the Nigeria for Women Programme Scale-Up had expanded its women’s affinity-group model to “4.5 million women organised into 300,000 groups nationwide.” She added that under the first phase, “more than 560,000 women were mobilised into over 26,000 groups, saving more than N4.9 billion of their own resources and accessing about N15.6 billion in livelihood grants.”
The Minister of State for the FCT, Dr. Mariya Mahmoud Bunkure, said “nothing about women should be designed without women,” stressing that Federal Government efforts are “guided by development initiatives that are people-oriented and women-inclusive.”
Technical Adviser to the President on Economic and Financial Inclusion, Dr. Nurudeen Abubakar Zauro, announced four platforms aimed at transforming financial inclusion into measurable economic participation: “digital trust infrastructure, data for accountability, blended finance and the National Income Activation Initiative.”
Citing EFInA data, Zauro said Nigeria’s overall financial inclusion rate stood at 74 per cent, but “a nine-percentage-point gender gap persisted, while the disparity in formal access stood at 11 percentage points.”
“A woman may hold an account and still lack affordable credit; receive a loan and lack a market; own a business and lack the records or collateral to scale it. Access is the beginning of inclusion; it is not its destination,” he said.
Special Adviser to the President on Job Creation and MSMEs, Mr. Temitola Adekunle-Johnson, announced that “about 100 women who are business owners and attended the conference would be given the regular MSME Clinic grant.”
Delivering the keynote, former Deputy Governor of the CBN, Aishah Ndanusa Ahmad, said “the key to successful women’s economic transformation is whether the financial system can organise itself around women, thereby helping them save, invest and build their businesses.”
The high point of the event was the unveiling of the National Income Activation Initiative, delivered in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs—an initiative aimed at “converting inclusion into income through skills acquisition, markets, digital tools, finance and business support.” Dr Zauro also led the Vice President and other dignitaries to exhibition centres showcasing innovations of the #SheIsIncluded initiative.